When my neighbor, Wallington, invited me to get high
in his basement, I couldn’t help but wonder: what if
he’s a serial killer? What if he uses his knee-high socks
to silence his victims while he gropes them in the dark,
loading his pistol and laughing like an evil warlock?
Wally’s been in my house. We discussed the NBA lockout,
sang Bowie songs, and I even served him a gin and tonic,
but now I feel betrayed because I know that until police
found decayed bodies and bones under the crawlspace
at 8213 Summerdale, John Wayne Gacy’s neighbors loved
going to the block parties at his house, hiring him
for construction work, being entertained by Pogo the Clown.
No, I won’t get high with you, Wally, not after I found
familywatchdog.com, a website that lists 392 convicted
sex offenders residing in Tallahassee. In reality,
Wally’s probably a harmless mechanic, a pothead
who admits to lying to clients, selling them new air filters
when the old ones are fine. But then I was reading
the Tallahassee Democrat and I stumbled upon
your mug shot in an article about a sex sting operation,
and I’d like to say you looked beautiful, your eyes brilliant
orbs of suffering, but you looked like complete shit, each feature
trying to make sense of itself as the camera light hit your face.
Six months ago we built a marimba – spent hours with a tuner
and a saw perfecting the pitches of each bar. It took us
almost an entire day to tune that last low D, and after
we carved our initials into the wood, we performed
for your neighbors and their teenage daughter, Milly,
everyone clumsily singing while you played
the melody of “Auld Lang Syne.” They tore down
Gacy’s house at Summerdale, but after the bulldozing
grass didn’t grow on the lot for years because Gacy
brushed the bodies with lime to purge the smell,
and when marijuana fumes waft from Wallington’s house,
I think, Wallington, sad bachelor, if you’re going
to murder me, blow off my head while I’m cocooned
in the sheets of my bed, sing me “Starman” one last time
in that sweet falsetto, use the marimba in the closet
to play a solo, apply lime to my orifices, and lie to me:
tell me that NBA players aren’t greedy, tell me little Milly
has grown up to be an opera singer, tell me the mulish
D is in tune, tell me I’m a safe man with no holes in my brain.
